Too Cold Out For Baby

There once was a time I could put my baby down to sleep and he'd fall asleep. He'd stay asleep until about 5:00, where he'd want a bottle and then I'd give him one and then he'd fall back asleep until 6:30ish.

This evening and yesterday evening and the one before that I had a baby who screamed himself to sleep. Because reasons. Reasons I don't fully know.

Oh, I could guess.

He was sick and then had a growth spurt and got into the habit of being picked up when he woke and then rocked in a glider with a bottle. How cozy. And no more of that because health is restored and that's not going to be a regular feature of life now because that ain't how you sooth yourself to sleep. But maybe he's still adjusting to that sad reality.

I can relate, though, to be honest. I've always been a crummy sleeper and when you find a sleep crutch, you become very resistant to sleeping without. But infancy is a good time to get with the program.

Another possibility is separation anxiety. He's become noticeably more attached to us these days and at night he may just not want to let us go anymore. I have less sympathy for that. Isn't that awful? But no, seriously, I can't be soft and stay in the room with him all night, loving him to sleep. He'll just wake up, I won't be there and then WAAAAHHH!

It's hard to listen to, it really is. Took him 30 minutes to calm down tonight.

And he's waking in the night, desperately in want of a bottle. I think it's thirst. The air is dry down there, despite the humidifier. He had a nosebleed last night. He's not taking in much, and he croaks when he cries, so that's an additional culprit.

And I feel like there's little I can do to fix this. Oh, I am a believer in sleep training. I've done it before and I'll do it again. I did it tonight. But shit. It's very taxing and I feel alone. I know I'm not; parents around the globe deal with this stuff. But I still feel isolated with this problem.

Also, I haven't left the house since Saturday and it's Wednesday. Prior to that it had been five days since leaving the house. At first it was being sick with a sick baby that kept me in. Now it's the damn polar vortex or whatever they're calling it. Take a baby out in a windchill of -30 with icy sidewalks? Well, that sounds right terrible.

I'm getting stir crazy. I do know I have to tour a daycare on Friday. That's a whole different post, though. Daycare. Good grief.

How To Wean Baby Off A Swaddle

So, I've been in post-swaddle hell for about... a month now. Jack has been busting out of his swaddle in strongman fashion for weeks. First we had to abandon the SwaddleMe swaddles, which at first were a godsend, making our baby sleep through the night at eight weeks.

Our little burrito boy at one month old
in a SwaddleMe.

They were too thin for an older baby, though, and the velcro, while mostly effective on a three-month-old baby was laughable in the face of a five-month-old baby, who could tear the velcro apart like the Hulk. We needed the industrial strength of the Halo Sleepsack.

Baby is snug as a bug in a really tight rug.
Halo Sleepsack.

This worked for another month or so, the flaps were longer (All the better for creating a nice, tight, full-body fit) and the velcro was longer and more no-nonsense. However, as great as it worked, I think a swaddle is something of a resistance trainer. The baby fights against it, even though he relies on it to sleep, and eventually becomes strong enough to break free. Every time. Sigh.

Night time sleep has been fine. No swaddle? No problem. He'll sleep sack it up, arms all everywhere and fall asleep. I think this is due to the sleep training from a couple months ago. Nap time? Pfft, forget it. It's been the bane of my week, as it's gotten progressively awful, I think triggered by a growth spurt.

So, what do you do? Well, you can try various products to keep baby's arms immobilized, very tempting if you have a baby like mine who prefers a soother but pulls the soother out and can't get it back in, or if you have a baby (Like mine) who scratches his face. But if your baby (Like mine) is rolling, sometimes you just got to bite the bullet and go swaddle free.

I tried various methods with poor rates of success.

1. One arm swaddled, one arm out.

Usually he'd just pull the other arm out. This really didn't work well.

2. Teach baby to sleep on stomach. 

Jack was rolling onto his stomach, which kept his hands off his face and less able to pull out his soother (Oh, he could still do it, but it was harder). So I thought, time to get him to sleep that way. I'd rub his back while he sobbed until he fell asleep, and this was time-consuming and annoying. It sometimes didn't work. 

3. Use your hands to hold baby's hands down so he doesn't pull out his soother.

This effectively makes you the swaddle. It was okay when it was holding one arm, but if he'd free the other one, you were screwed. At first this method was helping, so long as the arm didn't free itself, but soon it turned into a game for Jack and my presence in the nursery kept him awake. He'd bounce his body and giggle. Then he'd twist his body around to see if he could escape. Sometimes he'd come close to falling asleep, and I'd try to leave while he was still drowsy and BAM, arm whips up, removes soother, he grins at me and then cries.

4. Controlled crying while baby is unswaddled.

I'd leave Jack to cry for a few minutes and come back in to reassure him and then leave. I'd find my baby tired out from crying and as soon as he saw me he'd perk up, and we'd start over from square one. This was too infuriating to try too many times. Ain't nobody got time for that.

5. Let him cry himself to sleep.

This was the final straw. The first time I let him cry it out took somewhere between 20 to 30 minutes. The second time took about 15. I just let him do it again and it took 5. I feel we're really getting somewhere.

I bought the Zipadee-zip awhile ago, in hopes it would help the swaddle transition:

Fresh from the mail.

It helps, I think. He's still enclosed in something, although nothing that truly restricts movement. He's sleeping in it right now. I'd take a picture, but, you know. Sleep. It's happening. I'm taking zero chances with bothering him.

So there you have it. How to get baby to go without a swaddle when nothing is working? Dude, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you probably gotta go cold turkey, suffer through it and let your baby work it out for him or herself. And they will, because that's what babies do. They work things out. The hard part is letting them.

Sometimes you have to accept that your baby's cries don't mean, "I need you!" They sometimes mean, "I don't like this!" And that's okay.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll reap the benefits of all this agony. If it's anything like that last bout of sleep training I did, life should get a whole lot better around here.

Sleep Training

I decided this was the right call for me: Ferberizing. I was never anti-sleep training. I threw out my beliefs about one-size-fits-all sleep solutions when my baby spent the first couple weeks of life in bed with me. I was never intending to co-sleep, but when you pit your will against a newborn baby, the baby always wins. He transitioned out relatively soon, but I have remained flexible about sleep methods ever since. No ideology here except for: do what works.

So, last night the Dude was out at the movies with his brothers. They went to see The Conjuring, which is, if you ask me, not a good recipe for ever sleeping again. I love horror movies, but they linger in my mind at night and ruin my life, so I don't typically watch them. And while he was out, I was at home with Jack and a new sleep pattern that neither of us really wanted to deal with.

I started his bath routine early. He was rubbing his eyes and I wasn't going to make the mistake of pushing his bed time back if he was tired. No second wind tonight. So I gave him his bath and he pooped in the tub. Baby poop is not like adult poop. It turned the water a gross colour and I had to get Jack out, clean the tub, refill the tub and rinse him off and dry him with a new towel. Fun!

He fell asleep well enough, except he woke up after 30 or 40 minutes. Previous nights we had rocked him, but this was not a hole I wanted to dig. While we have some support in the city, the Dude and I are more or less alone in this with few breaks (Especially me) and I was not about to add a new exhausting sleep routine to our lives.

So I let him cry. I'd go in after a few minutes and stroke his belly and give him some comfort. He'd quiet and I'd leave. The crying would resume, I'd wait a little longer before going back and I'd do the same thing.

I learned something about myself. I found this much easier to do if I was alone. If someone else is there, my resolve breaks, like I feel worried the other person will think I'm being cruel. I've tried to let him cry a little in the past and this emotion has launched me out of bed or off the couch faster, or I've asked the Dude to do something. But when I was alone, and had a game to distract me from how long each dragging minute was taking (Time moves at a snail's pace when your baby is crying), things worked out quite well. I'd say he fell asleep after less than 30 minutes.

And he stayed asleep. He woke up at 6:30 in the morning, refreshed and smiling. I put him down for a nap today and he fell right to sleep. He's now rolling around on the play mat in front of me. And by rolling, I mean trying to roll. He was successful once, several days ago, and hasn't been able to do it since. Which is also when the new sleep issues began.

He's so cute, just flopping his body from side to side, trying to roll successfully. Then he takes a break and grabs at some toys, regroups and tries again. Occasionally I hear a grunt of frustration. It's really something to see a little baby figure out how his body works.

Oh man, I just watched him roll onto his tummy, only his hand was trapped underneath him. He attempted to get some leverage by grabbing the mat. He's so close!